Prepping for Performance Reviews
Performance reviews should be both painless and productive.
Let’s face it: there’s a lot of pain when it comes to performance reviews, and a lot of it is administrative overhead. Finishing all of the paperwork and written documentation can be a heavy lift.
There’s also a bit of pain when it comes to the conversations themselves, especially when you’re going to share a performance result that you know the team member won’t be happy with.
The key to making both of those situations easier to handle is preparing, and starting those preparations early enough. Each company has their own performance review processes (and some don’t have any process at all!), but the dream state here is that as a manager, you don’t have to spend a ton of time preparing the paperwork, and for your team members, the conversations don’t have any surprises, even if you’re delivering bad news.
The Rule of No Surprises
Nothing in a performance review should be new information.
If you're practicing active performance management, you should take opportunities to give feedback when they happen. This will lead to your performance review just being a recap of feedback that you've already given, and that's what we're aiming for.
The Rule of No Surprises also applies to the performance review conversation itself. Some new information that comes up in a performance review might be a numerical rating about performance, information about salary changes, or a new job title. With very few exceptions, I also recommend sharing this information in writing just ahead of the conversation. This allows the team member to react to the news in private, collect their thoughts, and come into the conversation ready to discuss it.
Of course, giving people great news in person -- like a promotion they've worked hard for -- is one of the best parts of being a manager. You know your team best, so use your judgement here. If someone is expecting a promotion but they are not getting one, you likely want to give them time to process the news privately before heading into a conversation.
Surprisingly, sharing news about a salary increase in person might not be the great experience for the team member that you'd hope it would be. They might be disappointed about the number, and they're left to deal with that disappointment live, on camera. It's awkward.
For this reason, I recommend doing these things to comply with the Rule of No Surprises:
Share a written recap of your feedback with your team member beforehand, including any numerical ratings or "official" performance review documents.
Share salary updates in writing before your performance review conversations if you can.
Share disappointing news in writing beforehand, using your discretion.
Brag Sheets, Shared 1-1 Notes, and Other Tricks
Prepping for performance reviews can be a huge pain. We all love to think that we'll prep incrementally over the course of the quarter, but it's hard to keep up. Here are things that have actually worked to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to prepping for performance reviews.
Even if review season starts in 4 weeks, you still have enough time to use some of these tricks.
Keep shared feedback in a 1-1 document
I haven't found a better way to stay prepared for perf reviews than keeping really great notes. Ideally, these notes should be in a shared document with your team members. This has a lot of benefits: 1) you get into the habit of giving feedback regularly and practicing active performance management; 2) you are following the Rule of No Surprises because everything is documented already; and 3) you can literally copy and paste feedback comments from your 1-1 doc into your review.
My template for a shared 1-1 document is super simple. You can find it here.
Make a brag sheet for your team
Here's something that feels like cheating: you can prepare for your own performance review and the performance reviews for your team members at the same time.
Since you're being evaluated on the performance of your team, you can absolutely use a brag sheet (list of accomplishments) for your team for both purposes.
This doesn't strictly need to be a document, but it can be. I really enjoy Lara Hogan's donut log. Whenever the team does something impressive, or just released a project exactly on time and without fanfare, have a small celebration (like a donut). Take a picture and mark down why you're celebrating. You'll have a nice record of all the great stuff your team did over the course of the quarter.
Things I also add to the brag sheet: positive feedback that I hear about my team from other people.
15 minutes at the end of every month
Try this if it's realistic for you. Of all of these tips, this is the one that's easiest to skip because there's really no habit around it -- you just have to be disciplined about it.
At the end of each month, I set aside 15 or 20 minutes to mark down notes of any big-picture performance trends or possible performance goals that might not be immediately obvious from the tactical day-to-day notes that I take elsewhere.
15 to 20 minutes isn't really enough time for reflection and documentation, so I usually work in reflection another time. I've personally just found that it's easy to skip a 1-hour long time block (and use the time for all of the other things I need to do), but I can stay committed to just taking 15 minutes to mark down some notes and check off a to-do list item at the end of the month.
"Shitty first draft" method
My biggest trick for painless performance review preparation is to just start. We can get inside our own heads and slow progress because we want them to be perfect. So I start with a "shitty first draft" (SFD). The deal with an SFD is that you expect it to be crappy. That's the point. So write out the roughest, crappiest version of your performance review, then come back to it in a day or two. You'll realise that your SFD isn't as crappy as you thought, and you'll be a lot further along than you would have been if you waited for perfect inspiration to strike.
What About Self-Reviews?
I always include a self-reviews as part of performance review processes when I can, and I consider it part of preparing for a successful review.
Some reasons I recommend them:
First, a selfish reason. They are a great calibration tool. Self-reviews help you understand if you're doing your job when it comes to giving feedback actively. If a team member writes a glowing performance review of themselves and you're just about to tell them that they're not meeting expectations, something is wrong, and it's up to you to figure it out.
They give your team members a chance to share their voice in the performance review process, which can often feel like a powerless process where they don't have a lot of input.
They make the team member take an active role in the performance review process instead of just waiting for your feedback.
On the flipside, some reasons they aren't helpful:
They can be a lot of work for the team member if they also don't incrementally prepare over the course of the evaluation period.
Self-reviews can come across as "performance review theater" if they're not really considered in the feedback, or if they're never discussed.
When making your decision about whether or not to use them (if it's up to you) ask yourself whether the self-review will be used in the process, or if it's just a step that you want your team member to go through for purposes of self-reflection.
And if you already use self-reviews but haven't been framing them as an opportunity for your team member to have an active voice in their performance review process, now is a good chance to start.
